Norse Goddess

Liv Ullmann—actor, director, muse—has been in town for her production of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and the other day she dropped by the Chanin Building, on East Forty-second Street, to perform a role for which she is less well known, that of honorary chair of the Women’s Refugee Commission. Ullmann had in tow a woman with mussed short blond hair and Prada glasses: “the Barbara Walters of Norway,” as Ullmann put it, who is making a documentary about her. The Barbara Walters of Norway—whose name is Anne Grosvold—was wearing comfy flats and carrying her own tripod, something that the Barbara Walters of America probably hasn’t done for a while.

Ullmann, who wore a black batwing sweater over a red satin blouse and black pants, explained to Grosvold that she helped found the commission twenty years ago, after she became involved with its parent organization, the International Rescue Committee, while appearing in the Broadway musical “I Remember Mama.” Ullmann was drafted to present a fund-raising check to Leo Cherne, then the chairman of the I.R.C.’s board. “I said to him, ‘If you ever need me, just call upon me,’ and he called upon me the next day,” she said. Cherne asked her to fly to Thailand to participate in a March for Survival, along with Joan Baez, Elie Wiesel, and Alexander Ginzburg, the Russian dissident, who had just been released from jail. “I knew nothing—I was a privileged person in every way,” Ullmann said.

Robert Devecchi, the president emeritus of the I.R.C., arrived, leaning on a cane, and Ullmann gave a cry of delight. “How are you, Bob?” she said.

“I was fine until I got into New York traffic,” Devecchi groaned.

“Well, what do you expect,” Ullmann said, soothingly.

“I expect nothing,” Devecchi said, with a theatrical sigh.

“This used to be an idealist who expected everything from everyone!” Ullmann said. Devecchi was her escort on her first visit to a refugee camp, she explained. “People heard that a film star was coming,” she said. “Bob is, and was, tremendously handsome, and when we arrived there everyone from the I.R.C. came over and said to Bob, ‘What films were you in?’ “

Devecchi gave his own account of the encounter. “I was thinking, The last thing I need to do is put on a dog-and-pony show for these celebrities,” he said. “Then a car pulls up in front of the New Imperial Hotel, and the door opens, and I could see this strawberry-reddish hair, and then she looked right at me. She has the most famous eyes in the world—that combination of strength and helplessness and sensuousness and integrity—and my knees buckled.”

Ullmann popped into the office of George Rupp, the current head of the I.R.C. Attempting to explain Ullmann’s gift for refugee work, Rupp talked about how she had once played the role of Anne Frank. “And you may not know that her grandfather died in Dachau, as a consequence of trying to save Jews,” he added.

“I’m surprised that you would know that,” Ullmann said, her eyes widening.

A few days later, Ullmann, still trailed by Grosvold, appeared at a reception at BAM, following a matinée of “Streetcar” that benefitted the W.R.C. Ullmann, who was in a knee-length black skirt and high heels, said that her priority in all spheres was to connect with people, and she described to the crowd an encounter with some street children in Bogotá, whom she took to a restaurant. “They wanted chicken wings, and when the food arrived they waited for me to take some first,” she said. “And, as we sat there, I felt a little hand appear here”—she touched her own forearm—“and another arm would be there,” and she gestured toward her neck. “They were in need of a grownup person, maybe even a woman.”

After Ullmann spoke, Cate Blanchett, who has been playing Blanche DuBois, told her Norwegian interviewer that it was an honor to work with her. “I’ve been stalking Liv for years,” Blanchett said. Carolyn Makinson, the executive director of the commission, said, of Ullmann, “She has an extraordinary empathy.” She added that when Ullmann needs to communicate about commission business she doesn’t use e-mail: she prefers the phone. “You hope you’re out when she calls, because she leaves these wonderful messages,” Makinson said. “I listen to them for a month before my voice mail erases them.” ♦